Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono addresses New York Stock Exchange, September 2012

“You can find almost everything in Indonesia: oil and gas, coal, geothermal energy, tin, copper, nickel, aluminum, bauxite, iron, cacao, coffee,” SBY said. “When it comes to oil, we have oil underground, under the sea and even above the ground: palm oil.”

Indonesia’s ambassador to the US, Dino Patti Djalal, opened the event by quipping that “today, Indonesia occupies Wall Street”. While the comment earned a laugh, outside the building real Occupy activists staged protests to mark the one-year anniversary of the grassroots movement.

Maybe the irony was lost on Dino. The Occupy movement’s loose manifesto, railing against the corporatisation of democracy and the inequitable distribution of wealth, has a certain resonance in an Indonesian context. In Indonesia, money politics is the norm and big business routinely prioritises profit over equity.

The activities of logging, mining and plantation companies in Muara Tae are a vision of unfettered capitalism writ large. It’s a neoliberal dream. The theory behind the development paradigm rolled out in rural Indonesia is that allowing big firms to take over vast areas of land will have a trickle-down effect on local communities. It will fund infrastructure, create local jobs, pick communities up by their bootstraps and set them on the way to prosperity.

Devastated: Land cleared by oil palm companies in Muara Tae

But as with unregulated investment banking, unregulated plantation development in Indonesia has been a disaster. In Muara Tae, the companies are, right now, destroying the forests and farmlands the Dayak Benuaq depend on, depriving them of the land that has sustained them for generations. It’s a situation that has occurred in villages across the archipelago over the past two decades, repeating itself like a bad dream, casting thousands into landlessness and deeper into poverty.

The global economic crisis was something of a Road to Damascus moment for many in the West. It gave birth to a new generation of activists driven by the realisation that the system was fundamentally corrupted, and epitomised by the Occupy movement.

The Dayak Benuaq in Muara Tae have exercised their own form of non-violent direct action to oppose the expropriation of their forests. With support, they may yet win and retain their rights, livelihoods and culture. In the longer term, the challenge is for politicians like SBY to change the system that gave rise to this problem and to ensure that the exploitation of Indonesia’s natural resources benefit its poorest people.

That statement is not as revolutionary as it might seem. Huge progress could be made simply by the legal recognition of the customary land rights of Indonesia’s indigenous communities, such as the Dayak Benuaq, and ensuring that they’re respected by companies. In July 2012, a UN report recommended that Indonesia do exactly this. It also suggested that it ratify International Labour Organisation Convention 169, a legally binding international instrument protecting the rights of indigenous peoples.

Three weeks before SBY’s sojourn in New York, Indonesia submitted its response to the recommendations. While it “supports the promotion and protection of indigenous people worldwide”, Indonesia “does not recognise the application of the indigenous people concept as defined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the country”.

In sum? Indonesia’s open for business: come and get it (and don’t worry about the pesky natives).

EIA on Facebook

Walter Palmer, the wealthy big-game hunter who killed a famous lion, could be headed back to Africa — if the Zimbabwe government has its way.

On Friday, officials in Zimbabwe said they intended to press ahead with a request to extradite Palmer for killing a lion known as Cecil just outside a sanctuary where the animal was protected. Later, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that it had finally contacted Palmer, a dentist who had shuttered his practice in Minnesota a few days ago and disappeared.

The Fish and Wildlife agency’s law enforcement office said that a representative for Palmer “voluntarily reached out to the service” Thursday afternoon and that its “investigation is ongoing.”

The investigation could lead to charges under U.S. law. If Palmer is charged with similar offenses by Zimbabwe, that would clear the way for him to be extradited to that country under a treaty Zimbabwe entered into with the United States in July 1997. It calls for persons of interest to be extradited between the two countries in cases that include a conspiracy or attempt to commit a crime, aiding and abetting a crime, or being an accessory.

The extradition process cannot begin until Zimbabwe officially issues a charge and requests Palmer’s return. Oppah Muchinguri, the nation’s minister of the environment and climate, vowed to press charges in a Friday news conference in the capital, Harare.

“I have already consulted with the authorities within the police force who are responsible for arresting the criminal. We have certain processes we have to follow,” Muchinguri said, according to the Associated Press. “. . . The processes have already started.”

Legal experts said Palmer wouldn’t have a lot of options to fight a return to Zimbabwe to face trial. “Once Zimbabwe provides a charge, it depends on how fast the U.S. moves,” said Stephen Vladeck, an American University law professor who specializes in international affairs.

Save the Tiger Posted on July 30, 2015 by Ben Westwood Last week Murray passed me a photo & a press sheet from a save the tiger campaign Vivienne was involved with 15 years ago with the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). He thought that I might do an update on the tiger situation to see if th…

1 day ago ·

Interesting blog by Dave Currey, one of the founders of EIA ... See MoreSee Less